Are You Looking for a Scary Read this Halloween?

The Library of Wales is known for publishing quality Welsh writing in English and within this scope, we have a few horror titles up our sleeve!

So, to get you in the mood for All Hallows Eve, here are a few of our favourite horror titles:

Margiad Evans' gothic extravaganzas:

Turf or Stone

A gothic tale of passion, violence, cruelty and unexpected tenderness. In this her third novel, Margiad Evans conjures a tempestuous and sometimes sinister world of rural and small town border life in early twentieth century.

At the heart of Country Dance is Ann Goodman, a young woman torn by ‘the struggle for supremacy in her mixed blood’, Welsh and English. In this story of passion and murder set in the border country, the rural way of life is no idyll but a hard battle for survival.

Written with terse incisive power... the novels of Margiad Evans glow with a dark... passionate light. - Derek Savage

Howell Davies' case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Frankenstein:

Congratulate the Devil

Starling knows a chemist called Roper, who knows a painter called Jourbert, who knows a man in Mexico who works for the government. Mescal has always had its routes into the world. There has been a new shipment, but not quite what anyone expected. This is a new drug. It opens the doors of perception for a man like Roper hiding away in his north London laboratory. He can make people work for him, turn his friends into fools or murderers, if only he could control his own mind.... Anita is such a beautiful woman but she could never love a man like Roper...

Congratulate the Devil is a delightful comic novel by forgotten Welsh fantasy writer Howell Davies. Rescued from obscurity by the Library of Wales this amusing tale of mind control proves to be something of a lost gem.

- Babylon Wales

And of course, who does horror like Arthur Machen? Known as one of as one of the four ‘modern masters of the horror story’.

The Hill of Dreams

A mystical, lyrical classic from the father of supernatural horror. Originally published 1907, it is widely regarded as Machen's finest lyrical work. It tells of a young man’s quest for beauty through literature, love, drugs and dreams.

Arthur Machen's most famous story was condemned on its first publication in 1894 as decadent and nightmarish. But its mixture of chilling horror and pagan sexuality with contemporary Victorian London, plus his distinctive and haunting writing style, soon brought him cult status.